She Still Has Time

until about Friday, to secure her legacy.

She didn't do it last night, or today. If she doesn't do it this week (endorse Obama), the opportunity will have been missed, and the process will move on without her.

Yes, without closure from Clinton, it leaves the party anxious...that she will pull some trick at the convention, that she will still be lurking out there, a stealth Republican doing all she can to help McCain.

But as Hillary Rosen's piece demonstrates, the key Clinton supporters in the party aren't going to back her in any such power play. By the time August rolls around, if Clinton is still lurking in the wings, she will have become a pariah. That doesn't mean she couldn't still be toxic enough to throw the election, and she might still decide to do it...but she wouldn't be able to do it as a Democrat. Her future in the party would be over.

As other's have written, it's Obama's Democratic party now. What's Obama's next move? He's going to wait Clinton out. There's nothing motivating him to hurry, because - as a reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog so succinctly put it - the ball is in her court: If she doesn't endorse soon, she'll be seen as not worthy of negotiating with, and he'll ignore her completely; he could simply announce some other VP in July (perhaps a supporter such as Strickland?), which would demonstrate a necessary but reasonable gesture of reaching out, and after that they will simply move on. If she does endorse him, THEN they can talk and she secures a position for herself and her husband in a new administration, but something other than VP.

But if she comes out for him this week, she still has time to say, "listen, it was hard, I know I should have done it right away, but I needed to keep momentum up for my supporters." If she doesn't' do it this week, we know that all the sinister motivations being ascribed to her are true.

It's her move.....